Concept Snowblower AV1110

Finishing the Morphology course at my university is a BIG deal (I study industrial design). We finish with a 5 month proyect in which we design a concept. We call it the "space ship" project. We start by designing lines, then surfaces, then shapes. Then we convine our shape with our partner's (we team up into groups of two) following both shape's inner logic. We are designers so everything must have an explenation. Later we assign a function to the resulting shape. This is the thoughest part since all shapes at first look like space ships. Ours, after a long time thinking and designing, was going to be a snowblower.

The exercise was about using our knowledge of the culture we live in to connect a designed shape with a function. It was basically the opposite of what we designers often do. So it is not an exercise as "form follows function" but the other way around, just because it was a Morphology course. Not the Design workshops we are use to. In Morphology we study shapes, lines and surfaces so that in the Design courses we can come up with just the right shapes for the solutions we suggest for each project. This is why this design will never fulfill the needs of a machine that moves snow as good as a real snowblower would.

Our justification for a snowblower started with the big hole our shape has. Something important needed to happen in that hole. We didn't want to put the human figure inside of it since it was too obvious and we wanted to do something more interesting. We went from water, to bacteria to finally snow. The remaining parts of our machine were determined by the needs of the blower: a mean to transport the machine (caterpillars), a mean to eject the collected snow, somewhere the human figure will stand and command.

The project not only consists on designing a concept machine, but also on building a model. Building models in Morphology is part of the learning since by getting your hands dirty you understand the shape, how it was made and how you can make it.

The difficuties you find in car manteinance or any other object's life span lies on what the market pushes designers and engineers to do. Here's just one of the many videos about Planned Obsolescence there are: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2KLyYKJGk0 .This was just an excersice that made us realize how much of our culture and society we know in terms of relating a shape or volume to a function or something that's being comunicated. We had to "read" what ever the shape was telling us (does it move fast, slow, in what direction, what size does it sujest, where does the human figure go, etc etc) and make it more obvious. Morphology just prepares you to understand surfaces, lines and volumes so when you actually design a solution for something you have the tools to find the right shape and know how to build it, how to make it easier to produce, etc.

Great project, well-photographed and nicely presented! I have no doubt someone with the time and talent could make one from this ‘ible, entirely with equipment constructed from OTHER ‘ibles! (…if the performance was there, which you’ve already said, “It wasn’t exactly designed for it…” It was “reverse-designed” – it was “dengised”!)

Seriously, though, I did want to address what seemed a slight misconception, seemingly equating “…what the market pushes designers and engineers to do.” with “Planned Obsolescence”. What passes for “Planned Obsolescence” these days would be more accurately termed “Deliberate Obsolescence”; two concepts – one applicable, one not-so-much – with some surface similarities, but which are, in reality, galaxies apart…

“Planned Obsolescence” is a valid, even necessary, industrial concept which calls for products to be designed to last as long as the designer(s) honestly guesstimate it will take their industry to make the next major ADVANCE in the technology, then the first generation gets RECYCLED into the making of the THIRD generation products, and so, on. This reduces both excess crap in landfills AND the massive, pointless wasting of fresh raw materials.

The behavior the lady in the video describes in the films from the 1950s is a PERVERTED version – “Deliberate Obsolescence”, a form of CONSUMER FRAUD (one of the most despicable) – masquerading as the real deal, which calls for products to be designed to last as long as the designer(s) honestly guesstimate it will take the user to get the package open and install the batteries, if any. After that, all bets are off. This reduces excess cash in consumers’ wallets, but at least it guarantees both excess crap for the landfills AND the massive, pointless wasting of fresh raw materials.

What’s not to love (if you’re a rapacious, totally-out-of-control industrialist)?

This is what Ms. Leonard called, “Designed For The Dump”, and the whole vile, pernicious, sick and sickening idea SHOULD have been met with mass arrests when it first reared its ugly, little head. Heck, even we have some of the criminals confessing their crimes on film! Slam-dunk case!

Unfortunately, we’ve been conned into “going along” with this nonsense for so long, it may be impossible to change….

In the electronics repair biz, when stuff would come in “under warranty”, our standard joke was that the “Warranty Expiration Sensor” (factory-settable in increments of 31, 61 and 91 days) must’ve been defective and gone off a little early. Either that, or the “Warranty Expiration Sensor”‘s OWN “Warranty Expiration Sensor” had…! …but THAT sort of thinking leads to a whole alternate universe full of self-looping, paradoxoidal spirals……which may make for an interesting (read: insanely-dangerous) Instructable, some day! (…remember the TV show, “Sliders”?)